Flash Of Truth
by AdamaGirl
Summary: Timeline: Season 2. While Commander William Adama is in a coma, healing from his gunshot wounds, his son Zak helps him see things a bit more clearly.


_**Disclosure: I do not own BSG, or any of its characters, yet they live on in my heart. SO SAY WE ALL!**_

It all happened so fast.

One minute he'd been in the CIC, congratulating Boomer and Racetrack on a mission accomplished. In the next, everything had exploded.

It wasn't like he'd never been shot before. It had happened a couple of times during the first Cylon war. But William Adama had been expecting it then, and it had come from the known enemy. That was what had made this recent experience all the more surreal.

The pain had been excruciating, as his chest and torso exploded. The impact of the bullets having knocked him backward and onto the tactical table. The last thing Bill had seen was Sharon "Boomer" Valerii's shocked face as she stared at the smoking sidearm in her hands, while a chorus of shouting voices filled the air. The last thing he felt was the simultaneous hot and cold gush of his own blood spilling out.

And then the darkness came.

Now he was here. Wherever that was.

Bill found himself standing on a lonely beach, beside a constant and vast ocean tide. It looked a lot like a place he visited while growing up in Qualai, on Caprica. But that could not be. The planet had been nuked, months prior.

And yet, he stood barefooted in the very sand he knew so well.

Clad in faded jeans and a white linen shirt, Bill looked down and smiled as the waves lapped at his feet. The sun felt warm on his skin, and a breeze ruffled his thick hair. It had been ages since he'd been on-world, and it felt good. Real good. It was funny, the things that he'd forgotten. Like what it was to breathe real, un-recycled air. So many years being on a battlestar had done that to him.

Bill started walking. He took his time. Here, no one was counting on him for anything. No one was there to stop and salute their commander. To ask him something, or need to be given an order.

The last time he had been this close to such freedom was when he'd come here during his last summer before joining the Colonial Fleet Academy. The days had been spent surfing. The nights were filled with stargazing and messing around on an old acoustic guitar. Life had been pretty sweet back then, but Bill had known it would not last forever. His father's displeased lectures about him joining the military were never far from his mind.

All of that was in the past. Or future. Here, it was hard to tell what time he was in.

Continuing to walk, Bill Adama noted something off in the distance ahead. The empty shoreline appeared to stretch for miles, but if he squinted hard enough, he could just make out a figure headed towards him. Man or woman, he could not tell for sure. Or if they were even human, for that matter.

The person seemed to be a friendly. They waved to him wildly, first with one raised arm, and then with two. Eventually, they quickened their pace, closing the gap at a faster clip than before.

Bill removed his glasses, which by now were coated in salt spray and useless without a good cleaning. He saw better without them, long distance, in any case. Hooking them on his loosely buttoned shirt, Bill, eager to see who this person was, picked up his own stride.

Closer, he found himself smiling again as the mystery figure broke into a run towards himself. He now felt ridiculous in questioning the identity of the approaching party, for Bill knew that he would know them anywhere. No matter the length of time or space that had passed.

For it was his son.

His youngest.

Zak.

The two men embraced. Tears of joy stung at Bill's eyes as he held tightly to the boy he'd lost.

Zak returned the gesture, hanging on with equal measure, to his father. He waited patiently as Bill flooded him with apologies, and smiled with warm admiration as Bill told him how much he was loved.

"I know, Dad. I always knew. And so does Lee."

"I never should have pushed. You weren't ready–"

Zak shook his head, interrupting the elder Adama. "Well, I'm glad you did." Before his father could protest, the younger man continued, "If you hadn't, I wouldn't have joined the Academy. And if I hadn't joined the Academy, I would never have met Kara."

Bill furrowed his brow and smiled sadly, his heart aching at the thought of the love lost between his son and the young woman with the call sign Starbuck. The daughter of his heart.

"And then," Zak playfully added as he gripped his father's shoulder, "You would not have had the pleasure of having to bust her ass for the past two years!"

"There is that, son," Bill agreed. "I see why you love her. She is... like no other."

"Really grows on a person, doesn't she?"

Bill nodded. "Yeah. Kara does that in spades."

Noting the tinge of sadness in his father's voice, Zak pressed him, "You're worried about her, aren't you?"

"She disobeyed me," Bill stated with a frown, his words slow and thick with hurt. "But not like in the past... this time it's different. Starbuck lied to me, Zak. You see, she's siding with someone I could not disagree more with if I tried. But more than anything, I feel like I may have lost her. And if that happens, then it's like losing you all over again."

Zak patted Bill on the back. "It's gonna be okay, Dad."

The two men walked together, making their way up towards an area of the beach that graduated into cliffs. Finding a large rock to sit on, they continued to talk.

"So, this is what Elysium looks like?" When Bill's son quirked an eyebrow, the elder clarified his statement. "Seeing as how I'm with you, I assume I'm dead."

"Not yet," Zak replied. "And since when did you start believing?"

Bill shook his head. "I don't, but this place..."

They stared in silence out at the ocean, mirror images of one another.

Zak explained as best he could. "It's like a way station. Someplace you felt safe and at peace, sometime during your life. You're at a crossroads, Dad."

The elder Adama silently shook his head.

The younger, continued to wordlessly scan the horizon.

Nearly a quarter of an hour went by, with neither man speaking, before Bill finally huffed incredulously.

"What?" Zak asked with a quirked brow.

"Frak me, but you inherited it after all!"

"What?"

Again, Bill chuckled deeply. He couldn't help but continue to stare at his beautiful son. "The Adama Silence. Your grandfather had it. I have it. To a certain extent, even your brother has it. But you, as a kid, you were all over the place. Never sat still. Talked a mile a minute. Your mother always said that if she didn't know better, she'd swear you weren't mine."

"Yeah, well... I guess dying has given me the time to finally settle down. You know? Enjoy the scenery."

"Sounds like a plan."

Zak frowned. "Not yet, Dad. It's not your decision to ma–"

"Yeah, son, it is," Bill interrupted. "I'm an old man. Tired. Ready to just... be."

"And quit?"

Not liking where their conversation was headed, Bill stood and walked back toward the ocean. He made it just to the last tide mark upon the sand, before suddenly falling to his knees.

The pain in his chest returned, worse than before. If that was even possible.

"She needs you."

Bill placed his right hand to the space just above his heart. He was having trouble breathing, and when he looked down at the sand, a pool of blood was amassing there, having been poured out from his gunshot wound.

"She needs you," Zak repeated.

Dazed, his father looked up to find him again at his side. "Kara?"

Unfazed, and quite matter-of-fact, Zak shook his head. He wasn't oblivious to Bill's anguish, but he wasn't too concerned either. "No. Kara's okay, Dad. She's gonna be okay. You guys all need her, that's for the Gods' sure, but she really doesn't need anyone's hand to hold. Ever."

"Then who?"

"You know."

At that, the surf grew stronger around them both, and threatened to overtake Bill Adama. He felt cold. And scared. The wound to his abdomen had re-opened as well, and joined his chest wound into turning the surrounding area into a ghastly froth of bloody water and sand.

The father reached a hand out to the son, for help.

But the only thing Zak offered was a name.

"Laura."

"What?"

"Laura."

Bill dug his feet into the receding sand as best he could, and grabbed an embedded rock with his free hand. "You mean, Roslin? The president?"

Zak grinned, almost playfully. "She _was_. That is, until you took the title away from her."

His father said nothing, and merely looked up in defeat.

Kneeling, Zak offered more. "She needs you, _Dati_ ," he said, using the Tauran familiar for daddy, something he'd not used since childhood. "Laura Roslin is dying, like you are right now. Lee's gonna help her, and so will Kara, but ultimately you're the one who can save Laura. And in turn, she'll be the one to save _you_."

"Son–"

"You promised each other, Dati. You'd lead the fleet together. To safety. And home. If you give up now, everything will be lost. Again."

When Bill next looked at Zak, he found his son to no longer be a grown man, but a boy of no more than five or six years of age. The same age Zak had been when Bill and his son's mother divorced. Waves came over the elder Adama, both in emotion and in actual ocean surge. It was getting harder and harder to hold on, but he needed to do his best, so he could stay and make his son understand.

" _Zakarias_ , this isn't about our family." Tears, combined with saltwater, stung Bill's eyes and choked his throat. "Roslin is not Carolanne. She and I are not married, and the fleet is not–"

"Your family?" the young Zak asked rhetorically. "But it is. And you and Laura Roslin are indeed married, like it or not. Your vows were all but sealed the day that the colonies fell."

At that, the final crushing wave struck Bill, ripping him from the Shore.

 **THE GALACTICA CIC - A FEW WEEKS LATER**

Commander William Adama gripped the railing of the room's upper deck Core. He'd just given orders for all recon and information regarding the planet known as Kobol, not to mention the proposed whereabouts of the former President of the Twelve Colonies.

A pang of painful regret, gripped at his damaged heart.

"Are you sure about this?" asked his XO, Saul Tigh.

Dee's words, combined with the memory of his time with Zak, had hit closer than Bill ever thought possible.

"Yes," he stated solemnly. "It's time to get our family back together."

#End#


End file.
